*sighs*

Sometimes I feel the urge to explain to our leaders that unlike us idiot laity in the church who are easily impressed - or maybe just tolerant - with buzzwords and the linguistic somersaults that make Anglican theology so unique and special, the World is not so easily impressed. In its hatred of the Bride, even when She speaks with clarity and truth, the World will still seek to distort and ignore what She has to say - how much more so when She speaks in hushed, unsure tones.

Whatever your opinions are on the matter, I think it's fairly obvious that what the World means by homophobia is anything less than 100% commitment to whatever is deemed the current right that the LGBTQ community is being denied of (hence why skeptical LGBTQ like myself who think civil unions are the way to go are suffering from internalised homophobia rather than possessing a different understanding of gender, sexuality and the roles cut out within civil society. I am fine with that: to be a heretic is simply to be in disagreement with the vocal majority - in another decade attitudes will shift and the current orthodoxy will become the next heterodoxy. That's how it works) or the current cause they are fighting for. There is something rather worrying for an Archbishop meant to be so media savvy and 'with it', to read this - yet another case of too little too late.

This isn't the time for nuanced discussions. The Church has neither the intellectual or social clout amongst the people it is trying to talk with to get away with it (and no genuine theology with which to show a united front. Some Bishops are for gay marriage, others civil unions, others nothing at all - how the Church can imagine it has the audacity to lecture the World on anything when its own house is in such disarray, I don't know. You would have thought that initial efforts would be made at bringing us to heel first before one starts tackling the World).

Poll after poll has shown that as with so many battles, the Church has lost this battle - if it was even trying to fight it, which most of it wasn't, as far as I can see; indeed it was loosing before it even started fighting. If you cannot see or hear or understand how the very people you are trying to debate with act and speak and reason, then I really don't know what hope you have of convincing them of anything.

I get very concerned with this blindness I so often see within the CofE especially as this is a church with a mandate for the spiritual welfare of the nation. Sometimes one can feel like quite the freak. Nonetheless, I will keep asking: if you cannot see the problem, how can you hope to deliver a cure?

The Ugley Vicar: The Triumph of the Cross

The modern mistake of evangelicalism is not to exalt the triumph of the cross, but to exalt the resurrection as the ‘solution’ to the cross, thereby making suffering merely a ‘problem’ to be ‘solved’, rather than a solution to mankind’s besetting problem and therefore, at one level, the key to everything.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

I think this is the first Lent that I'm actually enjoying since my reversion to Christianity. This is rather  amusing because I'd been fairly wobbly for a few months or so before Lent (missed a few Sundays or would arrive very late, fell back on Bible study and devotion, repeatedly fell to some personal temptations including serious hardness of heart etc.), partly due to some disenchantment with my local church community, partly due to trying to battle the warning signs of depression on my own.

The past two Lents have always been interesting as I set myself challenges, learning to submit myself to God's will through penance and fasting and the usual, you know the spiel. It has always been fascinating observing how I've progressed... and how I haven't.

This Lent has been a wonderful opportunity to see God working in the world around me. When I needed confidence in my new faith, He sent some amazing people into my life through the parish church. Now I'm learning what to actually do with this thing called faith, He has sent those people away which was sad and very painful but has forced me into the world in a way that I never was, even as an atheist.

As ever, even with my failings I am being drawn closer to walking with God as opposed to dragging my feet behind or cleverly skipping ahead. It isn't exactly joyful, because the work is hard, but there is a contentment there and there is a freedom.

It is actually quite terrifying to think there are only two more Sundays before Easter Sunday. The desert is lonely but there's a safety to be found here. But then I suppose that's where the whole 'in the world but not of it' comes in. Being able to stay in the desert whilst traversing through the streets.

Musings for the Beginning of Lent

More and more I've become convinced of the calling to a cloistered life: I am, without a doubt, a bad influence.

Lent again and with it being so early, it feels like I just got over the Advent fast and here we go again. Of course it's actually a kind of blessing in that twisted way of the Christian walk - I'm not exactly rolling in the lucre at present and Lent is a nice opportunity to 'offer it up' as it were, as opposed to worrying about my failures.

This year is slightly different because... one of my friends is also fasting for Lent! No, unbelievable as it may sound, this wasn't a deliberate intention on my part, it just happened. And even though I worry (was it my fault? Should she be doing something so extreme? etc. etc. Ironic really because now I know how my mum feels about me doing it) the truth is it will be nice to have someone I can at least occasionally break fast with.

But more important than fasting is the study. Recently I've become that awful person who seems to arrive to service just in time for Communion - again, not deliberately - so I might as well take advantage of the season to whip myself into shape. Perhaps start opting for earlier hours at work so I can go to evensong at the Cathedral and maybe midday eucharist if my lunch break is at the right time.

'For with God nothing shall be impossible.'

Essentially, that seems to be Lent 2013. Nothing spectacular really - I was meant to finish every problem in all my undergrad textbooks for Advent 2012 which kind of worked as I did more reading but not many problems. I think I even had dreams about getting back to fluency with my Attic Greek... that definitely didn't work out! - more about keeping up the fight. Whilst our Christian life is essentially us riding on the coattails of God's grace, there are times when you know you've been coasting and not really taking up your cross (thanks be to God, He loves us anyway and gladly helps us along the way). Lent of all times seems a good opportunity to address that.

But as ever there's a lesson to be learned in those quiet times after the initial romance. Repentance seems to come less easy when you've become habitual about sin - the hardening of heart, I suppose. Indeed, if anything reminds one about one's fallen nature, it's the long drawing out of sorrow for one's misdoings. Come now my soul, I want to say, we all know what's going on. There's nothing and nowhere to hide. But hide it does.

'And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.'

Next Big Future: Researchers invent new tissue engineering tool

Next Big Future: Researchers invent new tissue engineering tool: Imagine a machine that makes layered, substantial patches of engineered tissue—tissue that could be used as grafts for burn victims or vasc...

Here we go again Or a Monologue to the Self

So.

Someone in the church has hurt you? Have they disappointed you with their hypocrisy and fearfulness? Their disingenuous, self righteous posturing? Have they ganged up against you to sully your name and destroy your honour? Made your friends weep in the alcoves of the church building? Created rivalries and misunderstandings and encouraging the weakness of others that they might feed upon them for their own power?

Well lay it at the cross. Know that He who created the Universe endured far worse at the hands of his friends and sympathises. Know that those we revere as saints and teachers were often bullied and exiled and beaten and tortured by their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Lay it at His feet.

And get a life.

'Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,^[a] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.'

In all things, God is good. Thanks be to God!

So after the last post I did a shout out on Facebook for any new kinds of hip-hop that aren't full of the usual rubbish. The Left and Journalist 103 were recommended and given the angst laden nature of my last screed, I thought it would only be right for me to share the bounty of some pretty decent rap:



    I've listened to this on loop goodness knows how many times. It's pretty decent.

I'm currently on the hunt for some British artists who can represent the movement over on this side of the Atlantic and maybe the new Mz Dynamite (Lady Sovereign could get a few pithy jabs at the usual nonsense that passed for urban music, but I don't know if she's currently active. Random is still one of my favourite tracks).

EDIT: Angel Haze - one to watch out for, methinks!

What is actually wrong with us?

Whilst I admit to finding it hard to take seriously anyone who declares unbridled capitalism to be 'the enemy', Belafonte makes a good point in this interview about the apparent lack of social responsibility on the part of black artists such as Jay Z and Beyonce.

The reason I write Science Fiction like Fantasy...

Next Big Future: New bio-ink formulated to print living human tissu...: Australian researchers have developed a new bio-ink that improves the viability of living cells and allows better control of cell positionin...

How neat is that?

I like saints with interesting names...

...there. I've said it. No doubt that makes me one of the vainest, air headed Anglo-Catholic wannabes that have e'er walked the face of the Earth but there you go.

St. Ferreolus of Uzes - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online

As it has started, may it go on...

First off, a Happy New Year to everyone and anyone who might see this. Yesterday saw ma famille (including my Godmother) and I sit to yet another wonderful dinner with the usual mix of debate (I don't think we ever actually converse), snoozing and eating cake that make up most of our gatherings. I also got round to reading all of Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' which, much like Huxley's 'Brave New World' turned out to be one of those brilliant books that I wish I hadn't read (though that's where the comparison ends. 'Brave New World' is great but not nearly as well written). Both deal with aspects of human society that for the most part can be ignored, but it certainly isn't wise to. They are, however, aspects that can lead one to despair, which makes the former decision a foolish but relatable one.

The next book on the holiday list was going to be 'Petals of Blood' by Ngugi wa Thiong'o , but I think I'm going to lighten my mind with some spooky trash ('Ghost Hulk') and then try something light and breezy, probably fantastical.

Now I think about it, perhaps sticking to the schedule of a chapter of 'The Interior Castle' before bedtime will do the trick. Nihilism is catching, after all.

Today was a day for dealing with banks, paying rent and making notes for the paper I planned to finish by Saturday. You might wonder what I am doing blogging, but hey, at least I'm writing.

Interesting things I have read today...

Why Most Men Aren't Man Enough to Handle Web Porn by Alain be Botton who writes:

'It is not an insult to human beauty to suggest that the matter may not be quite so simple. Indeed, it is a tribute to the power of beauty to think otherwise. Religions may be mocked for being prudish, but far from it. In so far as religions warn us against sex, it is out of an active awareness of the charms and power of desire. They wouldn’t think that sex was quite so bad, if they didn’t appreciate that it could be quite so wonderful – and if they weren’t brave enough to admit that this necessarily means that it will also get in the way of some rather important and precious things, like God or your life.'

Suckerpunch.

Of late I've been fortunate enough to enjoy some thoughtful and strange discussions with a wise friend of mine (equally spinster-ish though not equally willing) about sexuality and marriage, particularly within the context of Church life which will eventually be the topic of many a blog post in the future, I dare say. I just find it fascinating that it takes an atheist to get to the heart of many religious philosophies concerning the matter of sex when it seems we'd rather cast it all into the sty.

EDIT: Double suckerpunch! A really good critique from Babes in Babylon: Atheists for Oppressive Modesty Culture

Unto Us a Child is Born

Merry Christmas everyone!

*

I for one happily broke my Advent fast with a glass of milk and a sneaky mince pie, the first of the pack - or so I presumed. Only to discover that my brother had already eaten two.

The parochialism of liberal Anglicanism

The parochialism of liberal Anglicanism never ceases to fascinate me. The other day a group of us were having a discussion on various church related matters and what I found rather amusing was the way the liberal-Methodist-future-Reader would keep saying "Some people believe..." before uttering a statement of Christian orthodoxy such as the second coming or concerning miracles and so on.

Each time I had to bite my tongue to stop myself saying "Well actually, that's what most people believe - or at least should" (which is certainly the case for the majority of Christianity and even within Anglicanism, unless you count Northern Hemisphere Anglicanism as the only true Anglicanism which I suspect is generally the unspoken assumption).

Regardless of one's own personal beliefs, which are and can be as fragmented as they come, it is a source of continual amazement how liberal religious people talk as though it is orthodoxy that is a minority opinion both in the contemporary and historical Faith. It reminds me of another discussion I accidentally had on the topic of Communion, where I was informed that any sort of belief in the real presence was actually a rather weird, exceptional belief as opposed to the official position of the main bodies of Christianity (and even within some of the more out on a limb types. I hear even some Pentecostal churches are getting into it these days) for the past 2000 years.

At least Luther would be rolling in his grave.

Now to be clear, I am not trying to say that everyone is some straight and narrow St Nicholas of Myra, ready to punch the heresy out of their fellow brethren, or even that the majority are. My amusement comes from the utter lack of self awareness that one is actually going against official proclamations of the Christian faith. Even if you find certain beliefs rather difficult to accept, at least be aware that you are meant to accept them.

*

Actually don't. I like having a laugh. Especially at the sort of liberal who is perfectly ok with the idea of a man rising from the dead after three days but thinks that actually believing this same man performed any kind of miracles is just a bit silly. To quote an atheist housemate, if you have no problem with the former then straining at the latter...

And every now and then you get a snowball...

Messenger finds hints of ice at Mercury's poles - space - 29 November 2012 - New Scientist